The universe has certainly seen better days, as right now, it’s pretty much one giant graveyard. But maybe there’s still life out there somewhere? Maybe. In Duskers, you’ll be taking on the role of a drone pilot, searching through empty, often almost completely scrapped, spaceships, in an attempt to figure out just what the heck happened. That and of course, the means to your own survival… hopefully.
Incidentally, you will not be travelling through the vastness of space, like this one – Early Access or not – is more of a hands-off approach. See, “old gritty tech”, as the developer describes it, are the only things you have access to. Visibility is limited to what (and how) the camera on each drone sees, while a rusty old microphone relays audio. Basically, your situation’s pretty darn rough. I mean, sure, motion sensors are a thing, but we both know those are neither super reliable nor extremely informative. Oh, did I mention commands have to be entered through a command line interface? Told ya: old-school tech.
Still better than nothing though, even if none of it will really tilt the odds in your favor. Odds which, right from the get-go, seem stacked heavily against ya, since everything has to be scavenged in this game: ship/drone upgrades, as well as additional drones, the latter being particularly useful as they don’t last forever, lifespan reduced considerably courtesy of nasty creatures lurking in the shadows. Oh my.
When I created Duskers it was really around a feeling: of being alone in the dark, of isolation, of being surrounded by old gritty tech that could only give you a partial picture about what’s going on around you, like the motion sensor that goes off, but doesn’t tell you exactly what’s out there. I like the idea of needing to rely on that tech, and the claustrophobia and isolation that would cause.
On top of all that, when, not if you die, it’s for good. No respawns, no checkpoints, no second chances, and everything is lost. Actually, logs uncovered remain, and since the goal is to discover exactly what happened… that’s a good thing. Permadeath can be disheartening or it can be a thrill – either way, the world is procedurally generated, so at least you won’t ever be getting an identical experience, which is certainly a plus.
Do keep in mind, that Duskers is in alpha stage of development, meaning it’s by no means feature/content complete or bug-free; and as noted on its Steam page, the storylines are all currently without endings. That said, they do plan to have everything wrapped up within 3-6 months, “depending on how quickly the game develops and how much feedback we get”. Not bad. Not bad at all.
Duskers [Early Access] – Steam, Humble Widget (Windows only, Linux and Mac soon) $19.99